364 GOVERNORS BLIGH AND BRISBANE. 
- The execution of the task which had been 
recommended by King, and which entailed 
an amazing sacrifice of property, devolved 
upon one whose name has often been men- 
tioned in this work, especially in its earlier 
pages. Captain Bligh of the Bounty had been 
appointed Governor of New South Wales in 
1805; and in December, 1806, William Wind- 
ham, Esq., then Secretary of State for the 
Colonies, despatched to Governor Bligh direc- 
tions for the entire evacuation of Norfolk Island. 
The reasons alleged for this measure were the 
vast expense of maintaining the settlement -, the 
difficulty of keeping up a communication between 
it and Port Jackson ; the danger attending an 
approach to an island without a port secure from 
tempests, and even without a road in which 
ships could safely anchor. Many of the con- 
victs were removed, against their own wishes, 
to Port Dalrymple, and other places in Van 
Diemen's Land ; but the entire removal of pri- 
soners did not take place until the year 1807. 
About eighteen years after this, another 
change came over the destiny of Norfolk Island. 
In 1825, during the government of Sir Thomas 
Brisbane, the island was again constituted a 
penal settlement; and, in June the same year, it 
was occupied by Captain Turton, with fifty sol- 
diers, and about the same number of prisoners. 
For several subsequent years the horrors of the 
place, owing to the frightfully vicious condi- 
tion of the convicts, became proverbial. In 
1839, there were upwards of seven hundred 
prisoners. 
